AIM

MSN

Website URL

ICQ

Yahoo

Jabber

Skype

Location

Interests

Anyone who has ever divved with me, talked WoWS with me, or even has heard of me knows about my over-the-top love for the Farragut. Well, Farragut is now my side chick, and I only have eyes for the new tier 6 love of my life. Behold the DD that made me shelve my Farragut (at least for a while)...my sweet Aigle.
Aigle is amazing (for my playstyle.) I absolutely understand why she gets a bad rap from some people...this isn't a ship that will work for everyone. For me, she's gudbote and maybe even overpowered, but I cant argue with LWM that she's a mehbote overall. And I doubt I'll continue to do *quite* as well in her as I did in my first 8 games, but I can tell she's going to be a go-to boat for me from now on...especially considering I did as well as I did today with only a 10-point captain and she really needs a 16-point captain to excel (I have PT, LS, SE, and CE per Littlewhitemouse's recommendations, will be adding EM and IFHE as I get the points for them.)
She just works for me. She's like the bastard stepchild of a Farragut and a Khabarovsk, feel-wise if not quite stat-wise.
Her handling is a bit clumsy, as was pointed out by others, and her shell arcs are...weird. I struggled to get hits in the first few games with guns; I can make the high shell arcs of Farragut work for me, but trying to adjust to Aigle's arcs was tough. I was having to walk my fire onto even broadside BBs. But she's incredibly fast, can take a beating, and her torps hit HARD. And she can straight up bully other DDs out of cap circles.
She gives you the speed to fly across the map, the guns to demolish DDs or HE spam anything else, and her torps are few in number but they make up for it in power. I was having a blast laying torp ambushes around islands or using my speed to flank and torp BBs as they meandered across the "safe" back area. And she's a pretty good cap control boat, if you're experienced enough at knife fighting to anticipate torps and evade them. Your handling sucks; you need to plan ahead and anticipate as you can't just dart through a torp spread with the twitch of a hand on a keyboard like the maneuverable Farragut; but with speed boost is on she's a bit more nimble than I thought she'd be.
She's not going to work for everyone. But for skilled gunboat DD captains, she's a beauty. I <3 you, Aigle.
My first 8 games in her: 6 wins, 2 losses, 42k average dmg (was consistently doing 50k except for one game where my team just collapsed so quick I couldnt do much and another where the enemy Saipan dedicated his game to keeping me spotted and then finally sunk me...another weakness, Aigle's AA is terribad. Just turn it off. Seriously. ) Here are the games I played today in my new beloved Aigle (in the spoiler tab)

I used coal previously to buy the French "Aigle". I couldn't wait to sell it after playing it for a couple of weeks. It had all the maneuverability of a canoe in a sea of molasses and could be detected from the Moon. I now have enough to buy the "Yubari". Is it worth it or should I just keep saving until something better comes along?
p.s. I have no experience with Japanese DDs so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Well, why fight it...I love these goofy French ships...bought her with coal last night...."cheated" and put a 16 point captain on her...
First game:
Second:
If she was a person:
What I feel like going into Cap knowing there are red DDs waiting for me:
Fun by the metric crap ton...best buy in a loooong time...

This isn't a review, a how-to-play guide or a recommendation for a particular 19-point commander build. But as someone who recently bought an Aigle from the arsenal with coal I think I do have a couple insights that might be helpful to someone who has just taken the plunge.
1) Got coal to spare? Consider getting the Engine Boost Modification 1 from the arsenal. Aigle's engine boost is special, giving a 20% boost to top speed rather than the usual 8%, meaning your top speed goes from 36 knots to 43.2 knots (without a Sierra Mike signal flag) when it is active. EBM1 increases the duration of this boost from two minutes to three. You can cover a lot of ocean in that extra minute or, say, have it active while you are smoked up to give faster forward and backward juking movement to throw off blind fire and torpedoes and still have plenty left to speed away as it dissipates. EBM1 takes the second upgrade slot which displaces (the usual for DDs) Propulsion Modification 1 upgrade. This trade can be mitigated by way of...
2) Initial commander skills. An arsenal-purchased Aigle comes with a three-point commander. With an in-game or premium shop purchase you can recruit a three-pointer with 25 doubloons. If you don't have a more experienced French cruiser or battleship commander to spare and re-spec this can make for a rough start. Three points gets you Priority Target or Preventive Maintenance and then Last Stand. Having LS or both LS and PM means you likely won't miss the PM1 upgrade if you took EBM1 instead. Given how hosed you can be by the loss of rudder control or engine power and the likelihood of this happening under fire, I think LS is definitely the highest priority for the first two-point skill. However, Aigle is really begging for Expert Marksman as well to remedy it's slow gun traverse, and EM is particularly effective here with the 2.5 degree per second bonus coming from squeaking just within the gun caliber threshold. With 15,000 elite commander XP/free XP you can jump start your commander to five points and pick up EM, so if you can afford this consider it. I ground out these points and was really pleased with the difference EM makes.